


Last Call

by Pdxtrent



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Choose Your Own Ending, M/M, Not Sure If There’s A Happy Ending, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, So much angst, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-10-23 14:16:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17685041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pdxtrent/pseuds/Pdxtrent
Summary: Derek had always known the call would come. Honestly, he was surprised that it had taken five years. But when the call finally comes, it's not who Derek expects. He'd naturally expected Stiles to have tracked him down. Or possibly Lydia, who would never let his decision to leave stop her if she needed to reach out. And he could maybe see Isaac tracking him down if someone was in trouble. Or even Jackson, if Jackson was in trouble.Not Scott, he knew it would never be Scott who would call him, and in that, he was absolutely right. But he was wrong too, because it wasn't Stiles or Lydia, or even Isaac or Jackson. No, instead it was the man who’d convinced him to leave in the first place."Derek, I need you to come home." The sheriff said into the phone. Then added after a moment, more quietly “He needs you to come home.”"You told me leaving was for the best." Derek said in a whisper. "And you told me to never come back."John sighed. "I was wrong. I thought with you gone he'd move on. And he did for awhile. It took me a long time to realize he's just been waiting for you to come back, and I think he's finally given up hope."





	1. Derek

 

 

     Derek had always known the call would come. Honestly, he was surprised that it had taken five years. But when the call finally comes, it's not who Derek expects. He'd naturally expected Stiles to have tracked him down. Or possibly Lydia, who would never let his decision to leave stop her if she needed to reach out. And he could maybe see Isaac tracking him down if someone was in trouble. Or even Jackson, if Jackson was in trouble. 

       Not Scott, he knew it would never be Scott who would call him, and in that, he was absolutely right. But he was wrong too, because it wasn't Stiles or Lydia, or even Isaac or Jackson. No, instead it was the man who’d convinced him to leave in the first place.

      "Derek, I need you to come home." The sheriff said into the phone. Then added after a moment, more quietly “He needs you to come home.” 

      "You told me leaving was for the best." Derek said in a whisper. "And you told me to never come back."

      John sighed. "I was wrong. I thought with you gone he'd move on. And he did for awhile. It took me a long time to realize he's just been waiting for you to come back, and I think he's finally given up hope."

      "What happened?" Derek asked. 

      "Something happened after Christmas. I don’t know what. But I've gotten calls from different bars every night for the last couple of weeks to come pick him up. He's never even been much of a drinker, but something changed. And there’s a look on his face now, something I’ve never seen before.” 

      Derek was silent for a moment, then closed his eyes. "It's been five years." He finally said. "The 11th was five years since I left town."

      "Fuck." The sheriff whispered. "He even mentioned it had been almost five years a month or so ago. I didn't realize. I thought if you weren't here, he would move on. He'd find someone less self-destructive, someone safer."

      "The Stilinski men don't seem to have 'moving on' built into them." Derek said. "I notice you and Melissa have never gotten together." 

      "I'm not sure this is how I'd want him to take after me." John replied. "Jesus, what I have I done to him?" 

      "I agreed with you." Derek replied. "I knew how he felt and I still left." 

      "I hope it's not too late." John breathed into the phone.

       Derek hung up and booked his ticket home to Stiles and prayed that he’d arrive in Beacon Hills in time. But time had never been Derek’s friend. Time is both fickle and inexorable. It seems infinite until the very moment it finally runs out. And there’s no way to know when time has run out until it’s far too late.

 


	2. Scott

       Five years. It had been five years since Derek Hale left town without warning. Five years since Scott had spent weeks trying to put his best friend back together. Five years during which he thought Stiles had moved on. He’d dated a bit in school, no one seriously, but Scott was sure he’d meet someone eventually and get serious.

 

       Because yeah, Derek was hot. Even to Scott’s strictly hetero eyes the dude was hot. But what is there to fall in love with? The moping brooding anger? Scott didn’t see the attraction. Derek had always been an asshole, and they were all better off without him hanging around. 

       But something had changed when Stiles finished at UCLA and came back to Beacon Hills. He was fine during the summer after school ended, fine during the fall, but as Christmas drew to a close, and the New Year loomed, he had started to change. He started having a couple extra drinks at night, and then a few more, and then it was like he had regressed to that time right after Derek left. Scott had stopped by for breakfast one morning, and Stiles was crying on his couch. He said it had been a sad YouTube video, but the lie was obvious.

       Scott couldn’t figure it out. Had Stiles kept some whole relationship a secret? Scott called the sheriff to check on his health, he called Lydia to ask what she knew, and all she’d said was ‘it’s the same thing it’s always been’. But Scott knew he’d been better. He’d seen Stiles almost every week during school. Scott would know, wouldn’t he? 

       He called the sheriff back and asked him point blank if he knew something, and John said he thought it was Derek. Still. But Scott couldn’t understand it, and hadn’t really believed it until the sheriff called him and begged him to go pick Stiles up from a seedy bar in the industrial district called Crowbar.

         When he arrived he found Stiles in the security office, and the bar manager said he wouldn’t insist he be arrested if he never came back. On the drive home it finally slipped out. The name Stiles hasn’t said in Scott’s hearing for almost five years. And that’s when Scott knew the sheriff was right. And Lydia was right. 

        Stiles had never gotten over Derek, he’d just been waiting and dreaming.

Hoping.

        But the thing about hope is that it runs out eventually. You exhaust your ability to keep believing in things, believing in people, believing in the very possibility of hope. And when that inevitability comes to pass, whatever hope has been holding up will collapse.  
       And what happens when it’s holding up everything? Scott’s pretty sure he’s about to find out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no intentions of continuing this. I was utterly certain I wouldn’t.  
> Couldn’t.  
> But I started wondering about the other characters around Stiles that aren’t Derek or the sheriff, and what they would think.  
> And I started thinking about Scott, and grudgingly this emerged.  
> I have no idea if I’ll write more at this point. I said I wouldn’t before, and I was wrong. So who knows.  
> If I do, it’ll probably be Lydia.


	3. Lydia

      The biggest problem with being smarter than everyone around you is a tendency to overestimate the capability of the people you love. Not her parents. She’d taken their measure years before and they had ceased to surprise her long ago. 

        She had known how Stiles felt about Derek long before Stiles himself had figured it out. Not surprising, really, after dating and loving Jackson. The gradual realization had been a joy to watch actually. Because she could see how right the two were for each other. 

        Derek, who feared betrayal and being left behind, could trust Stiles would never leave him, because Stiles didn’t love in a healthy way. His love was a depthless well, an endless abyss that would overwhelm and smother any normal person. But would finally allow Derek to feel safe.

       And in Derek, Stiles has found someone who would never leave him alone the way he most feared. The way his father had been left. Because barring a few very specific deaths including wolfsbane and fire (and even those were not insurmountable as Lydia knew well), Derek was very very hard to kill. 

        She watched them dance around each other for almost two years, and at the moment when they finally seemed inevitable, Derek had left. Vanished into the world so quietly, so completely that it took Lydia almost three years to track him down.

         Watching Stiles sleepwalk through the winter into spring. Watching him wait patiently through his birthday and graduation. And watching him finally fall apart that first summer has filled her with a depthless rage toward Derek that she hadn’t even known she was capable of. 

          But the second biggest problem with being  the smartest person in the room is knowing there’s always something more. And knowing that as much as people mouth about free will, people are merely vastly complex machines that respond to certain stimuli in a predictable pattern. A hundred thousand invisible levers that she understood and could move at will.

         And Lydia knew there was something she wasn’t seeing. There were pieces of the puzzle that didn’t  fit. If Derek had run once he realized how Stiles felt it would have been for a few days at the most. Something else had happened. She grew fixated on those last few days before Derek left town, and had managed to account for nearly every moment of his time. 

         It was Isaac who finally gave her the key. And it was a triumph she had regretted every since. He mentioned hearing the sheriff call Derek and invite him over for a beer the day before he left town.

         And that was all she needed. 

         The invisible levers of human nature were laid bare for her after all. 

          She thought knowing what had happened would give her the solution. Once she knew what had gone wrong, a small correction could set it right.

          But she had hesitated. Because while Derek may be the moon in sky of Stiles’ heart, his father was the sun. 

          There was a thousand times she almost told Stiles. A thousand more times she almost confronted the sheriff, and ten thousand times she wanted to call Derek and tell him to come back regardless of what the sheriff had said. 

         To her endless regret she never did. She, who never lacked for decisiveness could not decide how to tell Stiles that the pillar of his life was who was responsible for his misery.

       She watched him lie to Scott. She watched him lie to Isaac. She watched him lie to his father. And she watched him open his mouth to lie to her just once, and she turned to him and said, “Stiles, lie to your friends, your father, and even yourself if you wish. But if you ever open your mouth again to lie to me, I will crush your soul like this has been a picnic in the park.” And then she pulled him into a giant hug, and never told him she had meant it literally. 

      When Scott finally called her, after five years of watching Stiles hide it from all of them, she finally snapped. 

     Her regret flowed to the surface and poured out.

      Regret, she has learned from experience, is the most essentially human of emotions, and by far and away the most useless. Regret is the desire to change the past, to avoid a future that was inevitable once the choice was made. Lydia Martin had never had much use for regret, and until that moment, it was a word that meant almost nothing to her. 

 

       It meant nothing until it meant everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were two ways I could think of to approach Lydia’s reluctance to interfere, but being torn between what to tell Stiles was what seemed to be the most true. She cares for Stiles. And she knows his father is the bedrock of Stile’s security.   
> I don’t know if I’ll continue this. If you have someone (besides Stiles) whose perspective you want to see, let me know. If I can think of a good perspective I’m open to writing it.
> 
> If not, well, this has been surprisingly fun to write, and I’d like to thank my Darlingest Cousin for her suggestions about hope in part 2, and Auburn, whose thoughtful comments always make me consider ideas and new perspectives.


	4. Melissa

       She kicked herself later for telling him of course. But at the time she thought he’d seen it for himself, she’d been watching it happen for over a year and John was one of the most observant people she knew. So she’d mentioned it just one time, in passing, that she was looking forward to when Derek finally told Stiles he was in love with him. And the look on John’s face made her realize that he hadn’t seen it. 

        They finished their dinner in silence, one of their not-quite-a-date nights, and he dropped her off at home and left.

        Two days later Derek was gone. 

         And Melissa knew exactly what part she’d played in it. She’d never suspected John would react the way he had. He had gay friends. He had a gay deputy. She’d never thought he might not be okay with a gay son. Her confrontation with John just days later was final. If his pride was more important than his son he wasn’t the man she wanted to be with, she’d already walked that road and knew where it led. 

       She wouldn’t deny that the ache in her heart and the emptiness of her bed didn’t occasionally result in a few tears, or an extra glass of wine at dinner on occasion, but she would not make the same mistake again. 

        Because life is about the choices you make, and you can forgive yourself for making a terrible choice once, but if you continue to make the same terrible choice? If you refuse to learn from your past mistakes? Then why we’re you even here? 

        She’d made her mistakes, and she had to accept that, but she swore she’d never make them again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I give up on this. I don’t have a clue how long this will run. Yes, the sheriff POV is coming. Others too perhaps, because I certainly wasn’t expecting this one.


	5. Isaac

      Isaac had barely recognized Stiles when he came into the bar. They’d never been friends, not really. Just two fucked up kids in orbit around Derek Hale. 

 

       Some people were hollowed out by life, Isaac saw them in the bar everyday. They certainly didn’t make up all of his customers, but enough of them.  After 20 or 30 years of failure something breaks inside of some people, and they just stop living, though they keep moving.

       He’d never thought Stiles would be one of those people. He was always a little weird, and a little spastic, but Isaac had never thought he’d be so broken by life in just five years. 

        It took Stiles over an hour to recognize Isaac, and if Isaac expected a warm greeting he would have been very mistaken. Once he recognized him, Stiles looked at him like a kicked puppy. Then he reached across the bar and hit Isaac in the face before he could even think to move. 

        It was the bouncer who called the cops, ignoring Isaac's words, while Stiles screamed unforgivable cruelties at Isaac while sobbing.  And he realized that much like Isaac himself, Stiles’ world had crumbled when Derek had left. Only worse, and with a terrible finality that had led to this place. 

        After he left work he went straight to the sheriff station, and made it clear to the sheriff that he wouldn’t press charges. 

        The sheriff had nodded with a defeated look on his face, and Isaac asked the question he’d wanted to ask a thousand times. “Do you know why Derek left when he did?”

        The sheriff nodded. “Yeah. I told him I didn’t want a monster like him around my son.” He shook his head. “And now I’m not so sure if the monster wasn’t the better choice. I thought I was doing the right thing, protecting Stiles from a predator. But this-“ he waved towards the lock up where his son was, “How did this happen? How did I miss this?” 

         Isaac looked at the sheriff confused, “Because he was a werewolf?” 

        “No.” John replied. “Because he manipulated Stiles into falling for him. “

        “Is that what you think happened?” Isaac said. “That he was trying to seduce Stiles in some fashion?” 

        “Isn’t it?” John replied. “He was a murder suspect twice, and admitted to me that he had in fact killed people on multiple occasions. And Scott has been clear on what a manipulative asshole he was.”

 

     “You’ve been listening to Scott?”  Isaac said. “About Derek? Fuck there’s your problem. I love Scott like a brother, but he’s never seen Derek clearly.”

       “And you think you see Derek more clearly?” John replied skeptically.

       “Yes. I do. Look at who Derek picked as his pack.”

      “Jackson who craved family, craved connection. And he wanted so badly to excel. Also, kind of a dick, but he knows how to work as a team.”

      “And then he picked me, and Erica, and then Boyd. People who all craved connection. He picked us because he wanted people who would cherish the pack, who would value it. And he did everything he could to show Scott the value of a pack and to welcome him. And Scott kept walking away. Kept rejecting him.” 

         “Derek did everything he could to keep Stiles at arms length, even though all of us knew they were both falling for each other, like a slow motion dance. It was obvious to anyone with eyes. I had never really believed in love like that until I watched those two. I couldn’t understand what could’ve driven Derek away, I should have realized it was you.” Isaac looked at the sheriff with eyes full of anger and pity and got up and walked out. 

          

          Betrayal comes in many shapes and many forms, and the betrayal by those you hold highest always hurts the deepest. And the scars of betrayal don’t heal, not really. They crack and grow larger and harder the longer you live with them.

       

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter to go.  
> And that will be the sheriff of course. There are no happy endings here, but if you can find one in this mess I’m happy for you.


	6. John

      John had never been sure he wanted to be a parent, that had been Claudia’s dream. But when she asked he had said yes, and he’d intended to be the best father possible. He’d known when they got married that being a parent was going to be a part of being with her, and it had always been worth it. 

        It grew so much harder when Claudia died. It was no longer a thing they did together, but a solitary burden he’d been left with. And Stiles, he was so much like her. Fiercely loyal and endlessly forgiving by turn. He knew she’d be proud of the man Stiles was growing into. 

         Lydia Martin had been a constant buzz in Stiles words since before junior high. A part of his daily updates into the world according to Stiles. But that changed after Derek Hale entered the picture.

       He didn’t realize it at first of course. You’re never defending on the fronts you need to John had long ago discovered. He should have realized something was wrong when Stiles tried to tell him he could be gay outside that club, but the sheriff knew better. He knew his son, and Lydia Martin was too long a reference in their life for him to doubt his heterosexuality. 

       But Derek had always been careful to keep his presence in Stiles’ life from John. And when they finally did tell John about the secret supernatural world and werewolves, he thought that was the reason for why he’d always disliked Derek so much. 

       But then Melissa had dropped so casually into conversation over one if their rare dinners out that she was glad to see Stiles and Derek were finally coming together that he realized the truth, that Derek had spent years getting close to Stiles, worming his way into his heart. 

       He’d thought about it overnight, barely sleeping. He was still undecided the next day until he overheard Stiles and Scott, who rarely disagreed, have an actual fight, and after listening for a few minutes he realized Scott was furious because Stiles was planning to tell Derek he had feelings for him. 

       John knew he needed to act fast. So he called Derek and asked him to stop by the station for a few minutes.  And John told Derek to leave town and not come back, or he’d call the Argents and help Chris hunt him down. 

        The next day, Derek was gone.

       It hurt to watch Stiles grow bewildered, then hurt, and then lost and broken-hearted by turn.

        But he’d hoped that once Derek wasn’t around anymore throwing himself at Stiles, that Stiles would meet some brilliant girl when he went to college who’d sweep him off his feet the way Lydia had. But that’s not how it worked out. Stiles didn’t meet new people at school. His phone bill was the same six numbers it had always been. And then it was five. Then four. Then two. 

      The change in Stiles was so slow the sheriff almost didn’t see it. He withdrew so slowly. Becoming someone who was like a shadow of the boy he’d once been.

      And then there was a tension around Stiles that started to grow around his junior year at Stanford. 

       A waiting. 

       An inhalation without exhalation. 

       Derek was almost forgotten in the sheriff’s past. He’d never returned to Beacon Hills. He’d never come up in conversation with Stiles again after that terrible summer after he’d graduated from high school.

        And then Stiles came back from college, and got a job teaching at one of the elementary schools in the fall. 

       After Christmas it was like a damn broke. The last vestiges of the boy he’d once been collapsed and someone new emerged. John didn’t know if it was because Stiles was around more and so the changes that had built over years became more evident, or if something new had changed.

      And then a specter from John’s own past reared it’s head when Stiles got in the first bar fight and the police were called. Two nights later, it was a different bar, and another call, and another deputy.

      Another night and another deputy being dispatched after he assaulted Isaac, and John knew that something was truly wrong, and later that night, while John tried to get his son to explain what was going on, he finally said it.

      “Derek.” He had whispered. 

      The name, spoken in a voice of such despair had broken John’s heart. And then he talked to Isaac, and finally realized just how wrong he’d been over the years. And realized there was no way to fix what he had broken. 

 

       Because that’s the thing about mistakes, some you can correct and move on from, they can make you stronger. They can build character and help build lives. 

      And some mistakes you can never recover from. Some mistakes are a cancer of the soul, and they spread like fire, destroying everything around you that matters most.


	7. Chapter 7

Some final thoughts:

 

     I had intended to write a final chapter from Stile's point of view, I really did. I even wrote most of it. But I wasn't sure while I was writing it why it wasn't quite working for me, and I ended up spending a lot of time thinking about why. Finally during a conversation with my beta reader, she pointed out exactly what was wrong with it. It didn't fit in the story I had written. It wasn't that it was a bad chapter (it's not, it actually had some of my favorite lines of this whole piece) but it changed what this story was about. 

     When I wrote the first chapter, I didn't know what it was about. I had the idea, and it didn't fit at all, either in tone of in narrative, with 'Erase/Rewind', but it was so insistent I took the time and wrote it out. And then I started to see more of the story, and more, I knew what it was about. It was about the way other people's choices can affect us. The sheriff is actually one of my favorite characters, and his relationship with Stiles has always been one of my favorite things about the show, even when it's handled badly. But he is only human, and he is capable of being blind to his own preconceptions. He thinks Derek is a bad guy, and this is reinforced by Scott's thinking Derek is not a good guy (I get bored with 90% of canon narrative because it's just crap). 

     The sheriff's narrative became important to me to write because I don't think he's a bad guy, I just think he was very very wrong. My headcanon for it was that he's one of those guys that just doesn't really believe in bisexuals on a gut level. And that informs some of his responses and actions. 

     I don't know what the outcome for this would be, but I can't imagine that it will be a happy ending. There's no way for Stiles to reconcile with Derek at this point, and if Derek tells him the truth about why he left it will destroy Stile's relationship with the sheriff. Putting these two most important relationships in conflict was cruel, but it was the story I needed to explore apparently. Personally, I think Derek will lie to Stiles when he sees him again, to protect that last thing that Stiles can trust in. 

     It's nice to think that love could triumph here, but I don't see it happening. 

     I doubt I'll ever revisit this AU. I'm mostly a happy ending kind of guy, and while I do have a different take on a five year after story that'll get edited and posted eventually, it's a very different set-up and a very different Stiles. I like the idea of Derek and Stiles reconnecting when Derek is a little less broken and Stiles a little more mature, so I'm sure there will be others as well. But for here and now, this story is done. Thank you for reading along, and I'm sorry if you were hoping for a resolution that it doesn't have. It was always a story about the questions rather than the answers. 

 

 

-Pdxtrent

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I have no idea where this came from. I was siting at work and the idea just appeared. This isn’t connected to my Erase/Rewind fic, and isn’t canon compliant. I have no idea about the AU this happens in other than what’s here.


End file.
